Avo was featured in the Star Workplace recently in an article highlighting the fact that Avo is remarkable in more ways than one.

Besides being run by two awesome and inspiring woman - that would be Jules & Elaine - both Jules and Elaine’s husbands Grant & Glen, also work at Avo. But thats not all -this sounds like a Verimark advert - there are also two other married couples, as well as two couples who are in long term relationships and a few mothers & daughters & aunts & nieces. (Eat your heart out Verimark!!).

Once again, in true Avoness style, this proves that two hearts are better than one!!

Check out Elaine…. in the Woman & Home nogal!!

Elaine was featured in the April edition of Woman & Home, in an article called - Take a Sideways Step…want to make a life change but duanted by the idea of starting all over again?

W&H spoke to five woman who revealed how they found a new career by using their skills in a different way. Yep, our gorgeous Elaine was one of those five woman featured! Pick up an issue and read what Elaine has to say about taking the plunge, using your existing skills, ups, downs and tips.

PS - we love that sexy, plunging neckline!!

…good news for Apple as the Pope endorses the iPod. And speaking of iPods, even DA leader Tony Leon is getting in on the podcasting act. Other South Africans making a mark on the Web are AJ Venter, who’s just launched a blog on his site, and Stormhoek Winery, whose blog has helped them double their wine sales in less than twelve months.

Wells Fargo has made history by being the first major US bank to launch a public blog. Guided by History is an attempt to provide readers with resources to better prepare for the future, using the analogy of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire.

Google are busy buying, well, everything… the two latest acquisitions being Writely and @Last (who created Sketchup). Om reckons this is part of a much bigger plan, “Now buying Writely is in line with Google thinking of using browser for
everything. I mean an online word processor, and online excel spread
sheet…”.

The Web is abuzz following South Africa’s miraculous cricket win. Top cricket blog, The Googly, has some interesting comments.

And finally, if you really have nothing better to do, Ian’s Shoelace Site (I kid you knot), has more than 16 methods, brilliantly illustrated, to tie the average pair of shoelaces…
“Most people only know the one shoelace knot that they learned as a child, having been taught by either a parent, a sibling, a relative, a teacher or even another child. Many are surprised to learn that there’s more than one method, let alone sixteen!”

Highlight of the Week…

Chuck fever

This is an excerpt from the Human trend alert newsletter I get weekly:

Herman Trend Alert: Ubiquitous Cell Phones Blocking Relationships

March 15, 2006

The rapidly growing use of cell phones throughout the world will lead to significant changes in the way people relate to each other. While we are so well connected as individuals, that connection is relatively impersonal. We are laser-focused on our conversation with one person to the point that we do not interact with other humans who may be standing right next to us.

The world is rapidly becoming a collection of people in isolation bubbles who have no connection to each other. Wherever we go we see people talking on cell phones. They talk while driving, while shopping, while engaged in recreational activities. Last night we saw a family at a restaurant. Five people were sitting around the table, while three of them were talking on cell phones. Etiquette and manners are ignored when the cell phone rings. Japan has the right idea: cell phones are banned from restaurants there.

Conversations with people who are not present supersede speaking with people—family and friends or business associates—who are right next to us. If cell phones have already made us less connected to people close to us, what might we expect in the future? We already have challenges with e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, Blackberrys, and our cell phones. This technology allows us to be linked with the world at the same time we are becoming less connected.

Look at your own behavior. Have you ever talked with someone on the cell phone within hearing distance? Interpersonal relationships are at risk. Our on-the-street surveys over the past few days suggest that an amazing proportion of people actually prefer a phone conversation to the opportunity to talk face-to-face with an individual. What does this observation say about people wanting to talk one-to-one with their neighbors? Do you ignore your ringing cell phone or your colleagues?

We hear stories about workers located close enough to talk with each other—or at least close enough to walk a few feet and see each other—communicating by cell phone and instant messaging systems. Technology is disrupting face-to-face communication, making the workplace—and our lives—impersonal.

“At the core of Leadership is communication. And at the core of communication is the ability to listen with empathy.”

(By the way, Avo helps people learn how to do this)

“The front line delivers the bottom line”

Deep.

I went to the ‘never to be repeated’; ‘one day only’; ‘Steven Covey in person’ day at Gallagher the other day.

I think my biggest mistake was reading the 8th habit in advance.

I suppose I was expecting a profound AHA. That somehow being in the presence of the world-famous business guru would give me a life-affirming instant of insight and I would never be the same again. Umm…well… na.

Maybe it’s because I was feeling a bit dof on that day, so I wasn’t joining the dots as well as I should. Or maybe because I left an hour before the end and therefore missed the climax.

Or maybe it’s because a lot of what he said is already part of how we live at Avo. That we already see our people as assets and seek to help not only our own selves, but the clients we have the privelege to interact with, to find their voice.

Maybe I was there to really remind myself not to take the Avo space for granted - that I need to remember that our role is to guide, coach and drag our clients into the thinking that helps people recconect with their soul at work? Not sure, but I’ll figure it out…

After all the kicking and screaming to get the votes in, being accused of intimidating and corruption, it is finally done. It was a very difficult position to be in, but I was strong and took the bull by the horns. “Before I announce the winner, I would like to say you are all winners because all your blogs were AMAZING”. HA HA! You hear this line in very competition, from the judges trying to make everyone else feel better about losing. Some people fall for it very time, but guys I do mean it ok, “You are all great!!!!!”.

OK OK OK OK!!! I will stop and tell you the winner of the best blog - DRUMS please!!!! It’s HANLI!!! YE YE YE YOU GO GIRL! There is a prize for this competition, it is one thing that all the Avos are dying to have. Can you guess what it is?

It’s the new buzz, blogging. It’s so new that every time I type the word in my MS Word document it gets underlined by my auto spellcheck thingie: I shall have to add it manually to my spellcheck dictionary! It’s taking the internet by storm, and is categorized under the ‘tech’ term ’social software’. And by that, we mean the new way that people are connecting with one another, thinking together, and having conversations across the global village.

Companies like Microsoft (http://blogs.msdn.com//) and General Motors (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/) have already discovered how blogging, in all it’s transparent, no-edit, warts ‘n all realness, can help show a more human face of the company to the world. It’s turning the old marketing adage ‘control the message’ on its head, and allowing companies to engage with their customers in a very exciting new way. Customers can come onto the blogs, air their opinions, offer (positive and negative) feedback on products and services, and take the company to task on any issue they like. This, in itself is not new: what is new, is that the forum is public, transparent, and conversational. It’s basically market research for free!

Now the purpose of this article is not to expound or explain the blogosphere (another word my spellcheck hates). The best way to understand the blogging world as it exists for corporate companies is to check out a few blogs (www.avovision.co.za, http://www.csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com, http://www.tmtd.biz, http://www.stormhoek.com) that explain it. What I really want to explore is how this new phenomenon can be used inside a company, an internal blog that serves to do for the ‘internal customers’ of a company what other blogs are doing ‘out there’.

It’s always a challenge within huge corporate companies to deliver internal messages so that all the people in the organization remain appraised of latest developments, changes, new product launches or enhancements, brand messages and the like. All sorts of media are employed to deliver and control internal messaging: company newspapers; internal radio or TV broadcasts; the ubiquitous email messages; websites; internal promotions and brochures and even weekly publications of the CEO’s diary.

The problem all internal marketing faces (which is not dissimilar to the external marketing space), is that consumption of each medium declines over time. One of the challenges is that internal marketing (if done properly) follows the same marketing disciples of external marketing: ‘control the message’. So most internal messages read like external stuff it feels like wallpaper after a while and becomes invisible to employees to a large extent. Where companies had 100% attendance and viewership when their new, sexy, internal TV systems were first installed, after a couple of years, I see TVs on all over buildings, with workers happily working away in their cubicles, paying no attention whatsoever to the company broadcasts!

Another problem with existing internal media channels, is that most of them are very ‘one way traffic’ in their nature. They are not internal conversations, and are rather internal announcements and broadcasts: by the very makeup of their technology, they seldom allow room for reply. Even if the broadcast is in email form, reply is not really encouraged. People may reply to the message individually, but then any conversation that ensues would be between the two correspondents only no public forum debate unless, of course some poor soul hits the ‘reply all’ button, in which case the feedback from the ‘all’ would be fast and deadly, if my own experience is anything to go by!

Internal blogging sites may well be a medium for internal communication that addresses some of the challenges with the existing channels. Internal blogs mean that anyone is invited to participate. Communication no longer has the ‘company line’ flavour it becomes real and transparent, where employees can engage one another in debate that defies the hierarchical structure of an organization and allows voices to be heard from all angles. It’s no longer a one-way medium either, but rather a conversation that takes place in a public space.

Stephen Covey proposes that the 8th habit should be to discover one’s own voice, and then enable others to find theirs. Maybe this is one of the ways that organizations can use technology and the shift in communication and connection behaviour to allow their workers the opportunity to find their voices at last. What an amazing opportunity for HR people to keep in touch with the tone and culture of the organization, without engaging really expensive consultants to manage the research.

Make no mistake; internal blogging is not for sissies! A company has to be brave enough to know that many controversial and sensitive issues will be blogged: senior management may be criticized, policies may be ridiculed, and disgruntled employees may rage on in what may be seen as a morale-damaging way. Although there are ways of managing content on blogs, it’s not recommended that you hide the bad stuff. Part of employees becoming more engaged in the work place is about them feeling like they can trust the company they work for. Being able to vent and engage in debate on internal issues in a transparent way without censure goes a long way towards building a robustness and trust relationship in the company, particularly in this new world of work, and with a younger generation that values transparency and realness very highly.

Besides worrying about the potential damage that could be done by employees let loose to debate in a public forum, companies would do well to look at the benefits, and potential value that can be created in a blogging forum. People could also begin to blog about their successes, innovations and best practice. They may begin to deliver recognition to others in this forum, and make each other ‘famous’.

Company management may be pleasantly surprised (as I have been with our own company blog), how seriously people take the blogging space, and how hard they try to contribute meaningfully. They may also be pleasantly surprised by how this medium is ‘consumed’. Once people have blogged themselves, they want to continue to return to the site to see what other people have commented about their thoughts, and continue the conversation. All of a sudden, they have a reason to come back to the site, because that’s where the intrigue is!

There are already over 23 million bloggers actively blogging on the internet today. Google’s stats on new blogs registered are astounding (a Google search for the word ‘blog’ returns over 2 billion results!). It is becoming the trend for how people are connecting with one another globally. I suspect that companies who stay out of the blog space for too long will be sorry, and stale (more quickly than you think).

Avocado Vision (www.avovision.co.za) is a company that helps people communicate with people more effectively. For more insight into how Avo can help your people to connect better, please call Jules on 011 614 0206

I’ve stumbled across an excellent article at KansasCity.com entitled The Bottom Line on Blogging which takes a look at some of the emerging stories from blogging and bloggers in the corporate world.

Our very own, extremely successful Stormhoek Winery blog gts a significant mention!

A snippet from the article:

“But blog watchers and yes, there are blogs that track business bloggers say 23 of the Fortune 500 companies now have formal blogs. The practice has been institutionalized at companies such as Microsoft and IBM.

Smaller businesses with blogs probably number in the hundreds.

Companies are using blogs to build good will, to push their Web
sites higher up on search engine lists and to get consumers talking
about their brand.

IBM encourages employees to blog and set up a ‘Blog Central’ site on
the company’s intranet to spotlight the work of IBM bloggers. The
company also set up templates to help bloggers get started.

We’re a company of experts, said Brian Doyle, a spokesman for IBM.
We’re about encouraging these people to interact, and that leads to
breakthrough thinking and innovation.